decay

From Darwin's Plots by Gillian Beer:

"These examples show one of the difficulties on the path of evolutionary theory. It is a theory which does not privilege the present, which sees it as a moving instant in an endless process of change. Yet it has persistently been recast to make it seem that all the past has been yearning towards the present moment and is satisfied now" (11).

While I don't question her arguments in regards to biology, it seems that this does not necessarily transfer into other realms. The church constantly behaves as if the early church was the best model we have for what Christianity should be, and that the early Christians had better theology. Summarily, we try to discover what it was that they believed so that we can believe likewise, and sometimes it seems as if the arguments over what Paul did or did not mean when he said what he said wouldn't even be important unless we believe that what Paul and the early church believed is what we should follow. Similarly, that the early church best understood Jesus and what he meant in his teachings, and how we are to follow him. Are there any good or compelling reasons to believe that? Especially when the gospel accounts so consistently emphasize how much Jesus' followers didn't understand. That alone seems to be encouragement to press forward, rather than backwards, to discover new ways of meaning rather than trying to replicate old ways of meaning.

I think, also, that this quest for origins is accompanied by the idea that the world is consistently getting worse (more sinful), that there was a time (even in our own or our parents' own lives!) when things were better, more pure, and people really, genuinely followed god. We have to return, then, to the better time of before, we have to have revivals to bring back to life something that used to be alive.

I'm all about survival of the fittest, or maybe just of what Neruda writes, "Let us be weary of what kills, / and of what doesn't want to die." Extinction and death are important parts of life, and revival just means killing the new life. Let's be scared of anything that doesn't change.

In other news, in the library today I discovered an Un-American Activities in Washington State Report from 1948. It was transcript of various hearings of "Un-Americans," which translates to commies. I was proud of the English professor who refused to testify, and instead quoted Shakespeare and Plotinus at his interrogators.

some things used to be different

Recently, I read about various debates in Victorian biblical hermeneutics. One of the questions (that I think is still being debated today) is whether or not the bible can/should be interpreted as all other literature and writing is interpreted. 1) I hold pretty strongly that the bible being 'scripture' doesn't free it from the problems (and peculiarities) of all other writing. 2) No one reads literature as a set of moral lessons or instructions. Discourse and ideologies are examined, but narrative is not reduced (at least in literature studies) to attempts to discover how I should eat or who I should sleep with or live with (but of course writing has these political/ideological/moral conversations). But even if such lessons are prescribed, this doesn't transfer into prescription for how to live my life.

Attempting to turn writing into instructions, morals, ideologies to follow is disrespectful of text and author, and transforms the text into propaganda, or uses it for the purpose of propaganda. Similarly, trying to find an emergent discourse or lesson out of a text (what does the story of David and Bathsheba teach us? what does "The Bible" say about faith and deeds, etc) is really blinding. The bible is not the location of a single or coherent theology, it is many theologies. The bible is not the location of one coherent or systematic truth. What interests me more at the moment is thinking of the bible in terms of dialogue: each book with the others, with itself, with its readers, with other literature that has appropriated the bible and biblical narratives. And trying to find "lessons" in the bible is the source of the problem, it flattens the entire bible and the many voices found within.

Also. I've been thinking about history lately. I read an article on transatlantic literature in the nineteenth century last week, and one of the arguments being made was that the American writers in that time period were very concerned with the issue of history, precisely because their country was new and in this sense they had a chip on their shoulder compared to their european counterparts. What I see there, then, is deliberate rejection of ignorance of history in early US history. I don't know how widespread this was, but it is easy for me to see how this might have evolved into the current America (or American church). BUT, let's not talk about cause and effect, because that can be easily rejected, because I simply don't have evidence.

Instead, I'll say that I wish the church in America had more of a sense of and appreciation for history, especially hermeneutical history, for which interpretations that seem to be traditional and orthodox (the infallibility of the bible? "literal" creation story? etc.) are either new species of interpretation or were moot questions historically. Even more of an understanding of modernity, and conceptions of truth that were developed in modernity (perhaps post-modernity would not seem threatening to people if they understood that much of what is being rejected is not something that has been passed on from the beginning of the church or civilization or time, what is being rejected is a species of belief that is still relatively young, if powerful. But no one wants to study history: it's terrifying to learn that the present is not the same as the past, and is not always better.

And history is boring of course.